


Memory, Chapter 7a

by tetsubinatu



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetsubinatu/pseuds/tetsubinatu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small addition to chapter 7 of <span class="u">Memory</span>.</p><p>Just to jog your memory - Ivan and Duv used icewater to great effect and then took Miles out for a meal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory, Chapter 7a

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anotherusedpage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherusedpage/gifts).



> This was written for Yuletide 2008. The prompt was: Go to town! Slash is awesome. Especially if it's Ivan and/or Gregor. Or else Aral, before he met Cordelia. Action/adventure and plotliness will make me gleeful!

Final lines of Memory, Chapter 7

"Let's... go to bed, Ivan. It's late, isn't it?"

"Late enough," said Ivan.

\---

Miles was rather taken aback when Ivan perched on the side of the bed and started taking off his clothes.

"Plenty of rooms down the hall, Ivan."

"Tomorrow," said Ivan and slipped under the covers naked.

Miles blinked. "Pajamas?"

Ivan shrugged. "You're not wearing any."

Miles sat up, drawing his bedclothes up around him, looking like an offended deity and incidentally stripping the sheets off Ivan. "No, Ivan! I appreciate all that you and Duv have done for me today, but ..."

Whatever else he might have said was abruptly stilled in his throat. He had been trying not to notice Ivan's broad, perfect shoulders tapering down to a small waist and slim hips, but it was hard to ignore the way Ivan's hand was stroking his erect cock.

"Ivan?"

His cousin turned to him, the charming grin which had felled a hundred debutantes failing to reach his eyes. "Remember the summer when we were sixteen, Miles?"

Miles remembered. At sixteen Ivan's lankiness was just beginning to fill out into the impressive dimensions he would reach as a man. His hair, which he had failed to cut that summer purely in order to annoy his mother, curled in little wisps at the nape of his neck and framed the curlicues of his ears. Miles hadn't known if he wanted to kiss him or kill him; a rather discomforting feeling for a teenage boy whose body was his weakest point.

The two of them had spent all summer running wild at Vorkosigan Surleau, with Miles using every trick in the book to impress and one-up his tall, easygoing cousin. They had raced speedsters, played cards and generally made nuisances of themselves to all and sundry. And then - Miles still wasn't quite sure how - after a long afternoon spent with Elena, tall and golden as a fairy princess to Ivan's Prince Charming, and just as untouchable, Miles had ended up with his mouth on Ivan's cock and his hand on his balls, taking his frustration out by pulling an orgasm out of his cousin in a matter of minutes. Ivan retaliated and it became an ordinary thing for them to creep into each other's beds at night, or find a secluded spot by day - which was rather more difficult with Bothari tracking their every move.

Miles was in no doubt of his own heterosexuality, but he also had no illusions about his chances with the fairer, sex, even those who could be paid for their services. He wasn't about to take his virginity to some lady of the evening who would grimace her way through the transaction and go home to scrub herself clean of the mutie taint. Ivan, on the other hand, despite his physical superiority, was the beta to Miles' alpha. He might point and grimace, but it would be _familial_ pointing and grimacing, and Miles would still be in charge.

Miles therefore researched the subject and gave his well-oiled arse to Ivan, on the clear understanding that the favour would be returned, which it was - in strict rotation - for the few weeks until summer ended and Ivan's mother descended on Vorkosigan Surleau to reclaim her offspring, cut his hair and whisk him away to school again.

The following summer they met in town, and they had never referred to that time since, tacitly letting it fall under 'Follies of Our Youth' or possibly 'Things too Shameful to Mention.

Miles' face must have shown his incredulity as Ivan reached to pull him closer. Once, two sixteen-year-old boys had fallen asleep together after sex like puppies after a romp, but that was half a lifetime ago. Under his cheek, Ivan's shoulder smelled familiarly sweaty. The temptation to lick it flicked across his mind, but Ivan was talking, staring blankly at the ceiling as his arms pulled Miles closer.

"You had that knife that summer. You looked at it sometimes like it had all the answers. When I saw it lying next to you today I was so... angry. Cold angry. You act like you're God most of the time and then you go and take that knife and you look so... vulnerable."

Miles had always thought the knife made him appear cool, or at least sophisticated. He flinched in Ivan's grip.

"Sometimes," Ivan continued, his face set and grim, "I don't know whether I love or hate you, and today was too much. When we couldn't find you, do you know what I thought of? I just kept remembering Bothari's expression the time we sneaked off to the hayloft and he had them about to drag the lake before we came strolling out, cool as you please. You'd given me the works - I don't remember why, but you were angry about something - and I could barely walk, there was hay in your hair and Bothari can't possibly have failed to know what we were up to, surely?"

He looked plaintively at Miles, who just gulped. He'd always assumed that Bothari had been utterly ignorant of what they were doing, but looking back from this distance it did seem unlikely.

"I was angry at you a lot that summer," he admitted, sidestepping the question.

"Anyway, when we finally found you, with that thrice-damned knife beside you and I knew it was just more of the same... well, dumping you in that ice felt really, really good, Miles."

Miles nodded, meeting his cousin's glittering eyes for the first time since he had pulled the sheet off him. "I could tell."

"The adrenaline rush carried me through dinner," Ivan continued, "But I can't leave you here alone tonight, Miles, and I won't."

"I won't hurt myself."

Ivan brushed his words aside impatiently. "I know that!" He looked frustrated, as if he were trying to convey something that Miles should know without being told. And then Miles finally got it.

Ivan needed to touch him. Needed to feel that he was real. Needed ...

Miles leaned up, pulling Ivan's well-shaped head down, and kissed him. Ivan didn't kiss like a sixteen-year-old boy, but then, neither did Miles. He tasted the same, though, and his fingers were as careful as the first time he had opened Miles. Luckily there was an old tube of lube in the drawer, because Miles' libido had been on holiday for the entire time he had been on planet. This wasn't about carnal gratification though; it was about family, and what Miles could do to them just by existing. It was about love.

As Miles trembled under the fervent thrusts of Ivan's long cock, he felt connected again to life, and he grunted with gratitude as Ivan took his neglected cock and tugged it until Miles came, shooting sticky life between their sweaty, labouring bodies, and then Ivan came too, deep inside him, deep as secrets and family, and the unknown future.

* * *

Sometime in the night Miles woke to find Ivan watching him.

"Go to sleep, Ivan," he commanded sleepily, pulling Ivan closer. His face rubbed against Ivan's chest hair. It wasn't unpleasant, and he fell asleep again with the scent of sweat overlain with the tang of semen in his nostrils. Beside him, Ivan curled protectively around his smaller bedmate until finally his breathing slowed to match the sleeper and he rolled away, leaving only one outflung hand tucked into the curve where Miles' shoulder met his neck.


End file.
